Nuget中Installed和Version栏的含义管理求解决

Question

What's the difference between "Version" and "Installed" in the package manager in Visual Studio? Sometimes "Version" is blank, for no reason that I can discern.

Answer 1

per the shared screenshot and you are managing packages for solutions. You installed the version '17.0.6' of this specific package for the project 'Business_core' and 'CboDbProvider_core', then the 'Version' and 'Installed' is '17.0.6'(they are the same for the same project in here). For other projects, they are 'Blank' since you have not installed this specific package, please have a look at this document: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/nuget/consume-packages/install-use-packages-visual-studio#manage-packages-for-the-solution .

We can install and use different versions of the same NuGet package across different projects in the same solution like the following screenshot:

Then select the specific project and click 'Version' to choose a higher or lower version to update the installed version:

Answer 2

"Version" means requested, whereas "installed" is what was actually restored. This only makes sense for projects using ProjectReference. For packages.config they'll always be the same value.

A demonstration of when the two columns have different versions (with PackageReference) is if you modify your csproj to contain <PackageReference Include="Newtonsoft.Json" Version="13.0.0" /> . There is no version 13.0.0, the package author always starts with patch version 1, so NuGet will restore version 13.0.1 (and raise a warning). In this case you'll see the two columns have different values.

A more realistic example is if you use "floating versions". For example, <PackageReference Include="Newtonsoft.Json" Version="13.*" /> . In the past VS would show the "installed" version as 13.0.0, but I think now it will show 13.*. Note that floating versions have questions around when the package version will actually update once a new version is published to a feed your project uses, and also build determinism (more important when package authors don't follow SemVer and introduce breaking changes), so as someone who is risk adverse, I'd rather use Dependabot or similar, but different people have different preferences.